


Gone

by LadyMyfanwy



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 04:56:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21502228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMyfanwy/pseuds/LadyMyfanwy
Summary: Cameras, cameras everywhere, where is Ianto Jones?
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	Gone

Gone 

Day Zero

“Thirty day suspension. Do not call the Hub. Do not come to the Hub. As far as you’re concerned, this Hub, everyone and everything in it do not exist for the next thirty days.”

Jack stared across his desk at the dishevelled young man, taking in the blood-soaked trousers, the ruined suit jacket, the red-raw hands and the tear-streaked cheeks. When their eyes met, Jack was hard-pressed to decide what emotion was looking back at him from the blood-shot, red-rimmed eyes which once upon a time had been a beautiful sparkling blue. It could have been pain, remorse, anger, defeat, loss, despair… the only thing Jack was positive he wasn’t seeing was indifference. 

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more in need of a hug than Ianto Jones.’

Steeling his resolve, Jack barked out the words, “Do you understand?”

Ianto’s reply was dull and emotionless. “Yes.” The lack of the term ‘Sir’ was very obvious.

“Owen!” Jack bellowed, never taking his eyes off Ianto.

Clearly, Owen Harper had been waiting just outside the office door because he was at Ianto’s side before the echo faded.

“Take him downstairs, give him a good once-over.” Jack paused, waiting until he’d managed to catch Ianto’s eye again. “I want you back in better shape than you are now, do you understand?”

There was an almost imperceptible narrowing of Ianto’s eyes. “Yes.”

Owen waited a moment for Ianto to move and when he didn’t, the medic reached out and took his forearm, leading him out of Jack’s office, down the stairs and across the Hub to descend into the med bay, where he seated him on the autopsy table.

“What hurts?” Owen busied himself gathering instruments. When there was no response, he rolled his eyes and turned to face Ianto. “Look, mate, I’m not going to apologise for what just happened. I can’t. We literally had no choice. However, I have been in your shoes; I know what it’s like to lose someone you love beyond measure to an alien infestation or whatever you want to call it.”

Ianto didn’t acknowledge Owen’s revelation. 

At first, he was insulted when Ianto didn’t ask him about Katie, but then Owen decided that was okay; he found he didn’t really want to share her memory with anyone at Torchwood. No one would ever be able to truly understand what it was like to be forced to stand by and watch an alien parasite consume his fiancée’s brilliant mind, her loving personality, her precious memories.

Ianto’s physical exam only took about ten minutes, including a blood draw. Other than a few badly bruised ribs (which he taped up) and a large bump on the head from being thrown across the room by the Cyberwoman, Ianto’s injuries were superficial. His knees were going to be bruised from when he’d dropped to them on the hard, stone floor of Lisa’s room, his hands were raw from exposure to bleach and cleaning chemicals, and he undoubtedly had a raging headache from both the blow to his head and from crying for so long. Jack had told him he’d spent several hours watching Ianto on the CCTV as he’d cleaned the blood from the stone and the Welshman hadn’t stopped crying once. Several times he had even collapsed, curling into a ball and sobbing uncontrollably.

Satisfied that he’d gotten all the information that Jack wanted, Owen snapped the file closed – he preferred old-fashioned pen and paper for his medical records, leaving it to Ianto to enter the file’s contents into Mainframe’s medical database. On the pretext of getting Ianto’s ruined jacket from the chair, Owen slipped behind the table and pressed a hypo-spray into his patient’s neck, grunting when Ianto fell backwards into his waiting arms as the alien sedative took immediate effect. Even though he had just seen Ianto with his shirt off, he was dismayed by how little he weighed for a man his size, how fragile he seemed to be.

‘We are gonna have a long talk when you get back, Mister Jones, mark my words,’ Owen declared silently. “Jack!” Now it was his turn to bellow like a lunatic.

It took several minutes for Jack to appear at the top of the stairs to the med bay. “Sorry about that,” he hurried down the steps, “I was telling the girls not to come in until tomorrow afternoon.” He’d sent both Tosh and Gwen home shortly after the death… ‘the execution…’ he though grimly, of the Cyberwoman. Gwen was so angry she could have spit nails – although Jack was pretty sure she didn’t know exactly who she was angry at, and Toshiko had put on a brave face, even managing a brief smile at one point, but Jack could tell she was shell-shocked by the events of the afternoon. 

“Well, don’t just stand there like a git, grab him from the front!” As soon as Jack was in place, Owen pushed Ianto’s limp form forward into his arms. “You got him or should I get a chair to push him in?”

Jack cocked his head and looked at his medic. “Up the stairs? You’re gonna push him up the stairs?”

“Yeah, well, I meant across the Hub’s floor, into the lift, and then out to the carpark, okay, Mr Smarty-Pants?” Owen snarked even as he shoved Ianto’s arms into his suit jacket. “You can get him up the stairs.”

***** 

Two and a half hours later, Jack was back at his desk, organising his computer monitor to show the video feeds from the mini-cameras he’d planted around Ianto’s flat when he and Owen had taken the unconscious man home. There were a view of the kitchen, two of the lounge, two of the bedroom and one in the hallway facing the front door. At the moment, Jack was focused on the dual views of Ianto’s bedroom, showing two angles of Ianto Jones lying in his bed, and since his mouth was slightly open, Jack assumed he was snoring. ‘Probably should have included sound,’ he thought knowing it was too late to change things. 

***** 

Day One 

The live video feeds remained on Jack’s large monitor at all times; he’d managed through some trial and error the night before to attach and activate a second monitor so he could actually get some work done while spying on Ianto. 

At the moment, Ianto was asleep… still asleep. He’d stumbled into the ensuite a few hours ago to empty his bladder before going back to bed, asleep again before his head hit the pillow.

Ianto slept through until the following morning.

***** 

Day Two

When Jack climbed the ladder from his bedroom, the first thing he did was check the monitors before heading down into the kitchen for some juice. He’d just stuck his head in the fridge when it dawned on him that Ianto wasn’t in his bed. Grabbing a bottle of orange juice and an energy bar from the cupboard, Jack rushed back upstairs to his office and plunked himself down in his chair. 

A quick check of all the camera feeds, and then a second, slower, more careful search revealed that unless Ianto was in the bathroom hiding behind the open door, then he was no longer in his flat. As worry creased his brow, Jack pulled up the computer program that would activate the tracking device he’d placed in Ianto’s mobile when he and Owen had taken him home. The screen showed Ianto’s current position at Tesco’s, not far from the flat. 

‘Good,’ Jack nodded with approval. ‘You need to eat, Ianto, and make sure you get some veggies.’ 

The klaxon alarm for the cog door drew Jack’s attention and he turned to see Toshiko scurrying in, heading straight for her desk. She was already clicking on her keyboard and opening programs before she’d even gotten her coat completely off. The look of anxious anticipation on her face had Jack wondering what she was working on and he clattered down the metal stairs to land in front of her desk. He peered over the tops of her monitors.

“Whatcha got, my little tech genius?”

Despite Jack’s thunderous approach, he still managed to startle Tosh, who squeaked with alarm and nearly knocked her pen cup off the desk when she jerked her mouse wildly.

“Sorry!” Jack laughed. “I though you heard me!”

Flustered and blushing, Tosh pushed her glasses up her nose and giggled softly. “You know what I’m like when I get my nose into a good program!”

“So, what d’you have going on?”

The next hour passed quickly as Tosh explained what she hoped her new program would help them find regarding the possibilities of opening the Rift and returning home the poor creatures who fell through. Just as they were finishing their discussion – Jack was actually quite helpful, telling her what he could about temporal displacement and time travel without revealing too much information to her brilliant mind – Owen and Gwen arrived.

The cog door hadn’t even rolled closed before Owen declared, “Since the tea-boy isn’t here to make me a coffee, what say we all go get some breakfast?”

Jack shrugged. “Sounds good to me.” He turned to Tosh, “anything we need to worry about for the next hour or so?”

“Not a thing expected until tomorrow afternoon.” 

“Well then, boys and girls, I believe there’s a bacon buttie with my name on it.” Jack hurried back upstairs to get his coat while Owen graciously helped Tosh put hers back on. 

Going out to eat was welcome news to Gwen; she and Rhys had had another row over how late she’d been coming home the past few weeks and she’d left without so much as a cup of tea to start her day.

Jack was busy wiping runny egg from his chin when Ianto returned home with multiple carrier bags.

***** 

Day Three

After blistering the phone lines between the Hub and London in a conversation with a “…numb-nuts from UNIT…” as Jack called the man who’d call demanding a report for an event that to Jack’s knowledge never happened, Jack looked for Ianto, only to find him in bed sound asleep. ‘You need all the rest you can get,’ he nodded. “Sweet dreams.”

He didn’t bother to check the rest of the flat or he’d have seen the table in front of the sofa and the floor around it strewn with crushed beer cans and an empty whisky bottle peeking out from under a sofa cushion.

***** 

Day Four 

Thanks to an early morning call-out for a downed alien ship in a shepherd’s field, it was late by the time Jack had a moment to check on Ianto; he saw that the flat was in its normal tidy state and Ianto was gone. The tracker showed him at Lidl’s. Thinking it was curious that Ianto needed to go to the market two days in a row, Jack was in the process of pulling up the store’s internal CCTV when Owen called him away to discuss the autopsy of the ship’s unfortunate sole occupant.

Most of the rest of the day was spent recovering the ship and transporting it to a secure Torchwood warehouse for storage until Jack could decide its final disposition.

When Jack finally had the chance to sit down and catch his breath it was nearly eight o’clock at night and he was tired to the bone; he poured two fingers of scotch into a glass before looking for Ianto on the monitors. He found that he was actually disappointed to find the man sound asleep on the sofa; he spent a few minutes sipping his scotch and watching Ianto sleep, wondering if he was dreaming, wondering if perhaps Ianto was dreaming of him. ‘I kinda hope he is.’

Smiling at his silly flight of fancy, he downed his drink in one go and was just getting up from his chair when he finally noticed two whisky bottles on the table, one empty and the other roughly half full. He frowned, ‘I don’t remember seeing whisky in Ianto’s cupboards.’ Before leaving the flat, Jack had unashamedly snooped everywhere, thinking at the time how little Ianto owned; the very basics a single young man might need – a toaster, a microwave oven and a top-of-the-line coffee machine in the kitchen, and in the living room there was a flat-screen TV, sofa, coffee table and a bookcase. The bookcase held a few DVDs, CDs and paperback books. 

Along the wall there were ten cardboard boxes, all securely taped shut, which irked Jack to no end and for a moment he actually toyed with the end of a piece of the packing tape, hoping it would come loose so he could see inside. 

It didn’t.

For a few brief moments, Jack considered ripping open all the boxes to see if Ianto had any other ugly surprises hidden away, but then he remembered Ianto’s solemn vow that everything Cyber-related had been in Lisa’s room down in the Hub’s lower levels and that it had all been destroyed. He could still see Ianto’s face when he made his promise and Jack was thoroughly convinced that he’d been telling the truth. 

Vowing to keep a closer eye on Ianto and hoping that the whisky was a one-off, Jack finally went to bed. ‘If Ianto’s sleeping off a good drunk he’s not going anywhere for a long time.’ He grinned unexpectedly. ‘He’s going to have one hell of a hangover in the morning; maybe it’ll teach him.’

***** 

Day Five 

When Jack next checked on Ianto, he expected to see him still passed out on the sofa but that was not the case. The whisky bottles were gone, the curtains were open and the flat was filled with sunlight. One view of the bedroom showed the entrance to the ensuite and Jack could see steam billowing out through the partially open door. Before Jack could change cameras, Ianto came strolling out of the bathroom, a towel slung low on his lean hips and another over his head. 

Relishing the sight of a nearly naked Ianto, even though he was far too thin to be healthy, Jack watched as he towelled his hair dry, dried himself and then got dressed, putting on old worn jeans and a soft T-shirt left over from his university days. He shuffled off down the hall barefoot and Jack changed views to watch him enter the kitchen and set coffee brewing before plucking a bottle of Paracetamol from the cupboard and getting a glass of water. He plopped down in the chair, swallowed several tablets and then just sat there with his head in his hands, waiting for the coffee to finish.

Jack shook his head, knowing that Ianto was suffering most likely suffering one mother of a hangover and while part of him sympathised, most of him figured Ianto was an adult who knew the consequences of his actions.

‘Yeah, of course he did,’ Jack’s inner voice muttered. ‘That’s why he brought a Cyberman into the Hub.’

***** 

Day Eight

Jack hit the floor running just before six am and never had time to look back. Between a pair of Weevils playing Cinderella who didn’t make it back to the sewers before dawn to an explosion of debris from the Rift scattered across the Vale of Glamorgan and Barry Island to an alien ship full of tourists circling Cardiff Bay taking pictures that evening, Jack never had time to stop. He dropped off to sleep at eleven that night, out before his head even hit the pillow.

He never once looked at the monitors.

***** 

Day Ten

Jack slammed down the receiver as hard as he could and immediately cast a guilty glance towards his office door. Just for a split second he expected to see Ianto standing there holding a blue-and-white-striped mug of steaming hot coffee while shaking his head. “You’re going to break that thing one day, Sir,” he’d say ruefully.

Discovering that he was actually missing Ianto, Jack turned to the monitors for his daily dose of his Welshman. A few clicks of the mouse later, he found his prey in the kitchen scrubbing down the walls. 

Over the next few hours, Jack watched Ianto clean his tiny flat from top to bottom, including washing the windows and getting down on his knees to clean the floor with a scrub brush.

Ianto didn’t bother to turn on a single light when it got dark outside, he simply went to bed.

***** 

Gone

Chapter Two

Day Thirteen

As luck would have it, the team were rushed off their feet the entire day retrieving the worthless junk the Rift was determined to spew out: an alien toaster oven – with two slices of purple ‘bread’ still in it; an alien version of a wheelie-bin filled with putrid garbage; thirty-seven dirty nappies complete with three leg-holes and glow-in-the-dark orange poo that were scattered across several sheep pastures; a duffle bag from the NSF Fleetwood Banger full of clean, neatly pressed and folded uniforms, socks, underwear, vests and handkerchiefs; last but not least and definitely Owen’s most favourite thing ever, a trunk containing a myriad of 36th century pornographic magazines, toys and slutty costumes.

Back at the Hub, the medic took a great deal of perverse joy in unpacking the box and gleefully waving about everything he found using the excuse “…so the CCTV cameras can record it…” when Gwen complained. Whenever he pulled out a particularly salacious outfit he would hold it up against himself and prance back and forth in front of Gwen and Tosh’s desk like a demented streetwalker.

“How about this one for Halloween, eh, girls?” He smirked broadly. “Which one of you wants to wear this?”

When Jack was finally able to sit down and look at the monitors, Ianto’s flat was dark and silent.

***** 

Day Fourteen

When Jack flopped down behind his desk and checked the monitors the following morning, he was just in time to see Ianto step out his front door and close it behind him. He quickly switched the view to the street corner camera and saw him stride quickly down the sidewalk, jumping on the bus just seconds before it pulled away from the kerb.

He was able to follow the bus route for nearly ten minutes, watching it stop and start, people getting off and on, but he never saw Ianto. The bus entered the city centre and stopped yet again and Jack was sure he saw Ianto get off amongst a small herd of others but before he could trace Ianto’s movements, Gwen appeared and plopped a cup of coffee and a bag of pastries down on his desk. In the brief moment Jack looked away from the screen Ianto disappeared. Jack spent every possible moment at his desk that day, watching Ianto’s flat, waiting for him to come home.

He never did.

He tried using the tracker only to discover that Ianto’s mobile had been turned off.

***** 

Day Fifteen 

Jack was on the phone fielding a call from a self-important toadie in local government who wanted to complain about seeing the Torchwood SUV parked in a NO PARKING zone when movement on the monitor caught his eye and he looked up to see a decidedly debauched and dishevelled looking Ianto Jones enter his flat, close the door behind him and start stripping off his clothes as he wobbled unevenly down the hall. When he reached the bedroom he flopped face-down on the bed, pulled the duvet over himself haphazardly and was out like a light. 

Jack looked at his watch; it was nine-thirty-seven AM, Ianto had been out nearly twenty-four hours. A niggling question about where he’d been popped into Jack’s mind but he resolutely pushed it away.

***** 

Day Sixteen

It was late afternoon with the sun going down and the shadows lengthening when Ianto finally stirred. Jack couldn’t help but laugh when he saw Ianto roll over and fall out of bed to land on the floor with a resounding thud and then lay there for several minutes, blinking slowly and peering around the room as if trying to figure out where he was and how he’d gotten there.

Finally, he managed to kick his way free of the duvet and then he just sat with his head in his hands; Jack could only imagine the sad moaning sounds filling the room. At last Ianto raised his head and looked longingly at the ensuite – Jack thought he was probably studying the logistics, counting the steps required, debating just going back to bed – and then with a grimace, Ianto rolled onto his hands and knees, using the nightstand to get to his feet. He stumbled across the room into the bathroom and slammed the door behind himself.

Jack waited anxiously for the door to reopen, praying that Ianto didn’t fall and hit his head on the sink… ‘or the toilet… or the… anything!’ It occurred to him that perhaps a camera in the bathroom might have been a prudent idea. ‘But Ianto doesn’t normally drink, at least not this much, so falling down drunk in the loo wasn’t a problem then…’ 

It took some time – nearly an hour – before Ianto emerged from the ensuite, showered, shaved and looking like his old self again. Seeing the cloud of steam that came with him, Jack had to seriously admire the stamina of his water heater. “Wonder how long the one down in the locker room lasts?” and he decided to test it out first chance he got.

At six o’clock Jack watched Ianto put on his jacket, collect his phone and keys and leave.

Several hours later as he passed by his desk on the way down to his bed he glanced at the monitor in time to see Ianto return… wrapped around a gorgeous hunk of man, their lips locked together as they shrugged out of their jackets and went straight to the bedroom; there was a trail of discarded clothing littering the hall for the second day in a row.

Unable to comprehend what he’d just seen, Jack threw himself down in his chair and switched to the bedroom camera, then split the screen so he could see the views from both sides of the room. As he watched Ianto and the stranger writhing beneath the duvet he could feel an unreasonable rage building inside and when Ianto reached into the night table and handed a tube of lube to the man crouched over him, Jack roared with anger and shoved the monitor off the desk to crash and burn on the floor.

He grabbed his Webley from the desk drawer, made sure it was fully loaded and then stormed from his office, stomping down the stairs two at a time and going straight to the armoury. It took him three tries to enter the code correctly his hands were shaking so badly but once inside he pulled out a small carry-all from the cupboard and proceeded to fill it with a range of weapons – human and alien – and added ammo packs from three different drawers. Slamming the door shut behind him and making sure the lock engaged, he headed for the gun range, detouring just long enough to retrieve the bottle of twenty-year-old single malt Islay scotch from the secure archives vault in his office. He’d hidden it there to keep Owen from guzzling it like it was water.

Over the next two hours Jack used every weapon in the carry-all and exhausted all the ammunition he’d brought with him. There was not a single target left unmaimed by Jack’s raging jealousy as he drank the whisky and pictured Ianto having sex with that stranger.

The last coherent thought he had as he sagged down the range wall was, ‘Dear God, I hope they used protection…’ 

***** 

Day Twenty

Even though Tosh had replaced Jack’s broken monitor that very next day – although it was clear she didn’t accept his excuse for its destruction – Jack couldn’t bring himself to turn it on for several days. He didn’t want to see… couldn’t bear to see the evidence of Ianto’s night, not the rumpled bed, not the stranger, not even Ianto himself.

When he did finally turn it on four days later, the flat was immaculate and Ianto was nowhere to be seen. Afraid that he might see Ianto bringing home another guy, Jack turned it off and resolutely left it off for the next week.

***** 

Day Twenty-Seven

Truly missing Ianto Jones, Jack turned on his monitor and eagerly scanned the camera feeds but there was no Ianto to be seen. The bed was made, there was a coffee mug in the dish drainer, but no one was home. The tracker wasn’t active, which worried Jack so he called Ianto’s mobile, which was still turned off. Disappointed, Jack took his Starbucks coffee and went down to the main floor to see what Toshiko was up to.

***** 

Day Twenty-Eight

Having been denied a glimpse of his Welshman the day before, Jack was up quite early, determined to catch Ianto before he left home but to no avail. Even though it was barely six AM, the flat was dark and from the dim light filtering in from the street he could tell that Ianto was not in his bed.

Jealousy flared again as Jack pictured Ianto spending the night in someone else’s bed, but he managed to contain himself and merely turned the monitor off. The last thing he wanted was another lecture from Tosh about replacing equipment due to carelessness; Jack had told her he had pushed it too close to the edge while working on a complicated file that needed lots of desk space on which to spread out. “I got up to get coffee and caught it with my hip and I couldn’t catch it in time,” he’d fibbed, but from the look Tosh gave him he was sure she knew he was lying to her face. Guilt made him avoid her for the rest of the day.

He did try Ianto’s mobile several times but each time he found the phone was turned off.

***** 

Day Twenty-Nine

Like picking at a healing wound, Jack couldn’t stop himself from checking on Ianto. It was mid-afternoon, they’d had Meat Feast pizza at Owen’s insistence for lunch, and Jack had indigestion which was made all the worse when he saw that Ianto wasn’t home, the bed was neatly made and the coffee mug was clean.

“Did he not come home or has he already gone out again?” A large part of Jack sincerely hoped that it was the latter. Knowing it was useless, he called Ianto’s mobile; it was turned off.

***** 

Day Thirty

Jack put off checking the camera feed from Ianto’s flat for all of ten minutes after he got up – all the time it took for him to collect a slice of cold Meat Feast from the kitchen and get back to his office. At seven AM precisely, positive that when he turned on the monitor he’d find Ianto in his kitchen making coffee, Jack flipped the ON switch.

Ianto wasn’t home, the bed was neatly made and the coffee mug sat in the dish drainer. His mobile was still turned off.

Jack spent the entire day moping around the Hub, ignoring his team for hours and then engaging them in non-stop conversation like a maniac. By the end of the day the atmosphere in the Hub was so bad that even Toshiko went home early, the team escaping like rats from a sinking ship.

Jack spent most of the night standing atop the Altoluso apartment building, surveying his kingdom and thinking about Ianto. He constantly checked his watch, counting down the hours until his Welshman returned to him in the morning.

At sunrise he returned to the Hub, showered and dressed in a brand-new shirt, pressed trousers with a crisp crease down the leg and new laces in his boots. By seven-thirty he was upstairs in the Tourist Information Centre, sitting in Ianto’s chair, waiting for the door to open. Then he thought that perhaps he needed to look more relaxed so he leaned back and put his feet up on the counter, lacing his fingers behind his head. With just a few minutes to go before Ianto was due to walk through the front door, Jack decided being ten feet from the door made him look too anxious so he punched the red button under the counter and ran like a madman down the secret hallway, arriving in the Hub slightly out of breath but with time to spare.

“Where should I be?” Jack looked around his domain. “My office? Like I don’t care whether he’s back or not? I could look surprised when I see him, like I’d forgotten today was the day he returns?” 

Halfway up the stairs he stopped. “No, that would just be mean. Ianto needs to know I’m glad he’s back, that we’ve missed him… well, Owen missed his coffee at least.” Jack snapped his fingers. “I know!” He dashed back down and flung himself into Tosh’s chair, turning on her monitors and queuing up whatever program showed first on her menu. “This way, I’ll be the first thing he sees when the cog door opens and he’ll see how happy I am that he’s back.”

Eight o’clock came and went… no Ianto.

Nine o’clock came and Toshiko arrived but not Ianto. She stood frowning at him when she saw him at her desk and she wouldn’t give him his Starbucks coffee and everything bagel until he’d vacated her seat. 

By ten o’clock Jack was pacing his office, back and forth, unable to decide if Ianto was trying to make a point by being late or if something was wrong. He called Ianto’s mobile over and over again to no avail; it was still turned off, the tracker useless. His hand was shaking when he reached out and turned on the monitors… ‘Why didn’t I think of this before?’ he mentally chastised himself. ‘You can be such an idiot sometimes!’ 

The flat was empty. There was no neatly made bed, no clean coffee cup, no furniture and definitely no Ianto Jones. There was absolutely nothing there.

“TOSH!” He panicked and ran down the stairs, grabbing the tech genius by the shoulder and spinning her around. “He’s gone! Ianto’s gone! Gone!”

“What?” It took a moment for Tosh to switch mental gears from translating an alien language to understanding what Jack was going on about.

“Ianto!” He swung her back to face her computer. “Pull up the camera feed that’s on my monitor…” He waited, holding his breath until the views of Ianto’s flat appeared. “See! There’s nothing there… he’s gone!”

Toshiko brought up Ianto’s flat and scrolled through the views. “It doesn’t look like anyone has ever lived here,” and there was amazement in her voice. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know!” Jack yelled. “Find him!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, Jack Harkness,” Tosh responded firmly. “Go sit down and let me do my job.”

Blinking in surprise and properly chastised, Jack pulled Gwen’s chair over and sat down fairly close to Tosh, where he could still see the screens but not get in her way. He watched as she pulled up several different views of Ianto’s street and then looked at footage of the same area taken over the past week. There was absolutely no difference in anything on any day. The same cars were parked in the same spots, the same people came and went, the same dog peed on the same tree at the same time… every single day.

Finally, Tosh sighed. “I’m sorry, Jack. Somehow the footage has all been wiped from every mainframe in the city and what you see here has been looped. There is nothing left but what you see here.” She watched hope fade from Jack’s eyes. “Jack, I’m sorry.”

Jack slowly stood from the chair and headed for his office; his body felt like it was made of lead, tons of it and he could barely lift his feet to climb the stairs. He sank into his chair and tried to remember the last time he’d actually seen Ianto Jones… and then it came to him.

“The night he brought that man home with him.” It occurred to him that that man might have been the last one to see Ianto alive. ‘Don’t be an arse, Harkness! This isn’t the movies. Even if the guy did do something bad to Ianto he’s not going to come back and empty out his flat!’

He keyed his comms. “Tosh? I put a tracker in Ianto’s mobile but whenever I call it’s turned off. If it comes back let me know? And you do me a favour and look for Ianto, will you? A trap-and-trace on his credit cards, maybe facial recognition at the airport and train stations? Try anything you can think of, okay?”

“Already working on it, Jack. As soon as I find anything you’ll be the first to know.”

***** 

“Here ye go, laddie,” Archie pushed open the great wooden doors with a grand flourish. “The original Torchwood Institute, where it all began. Founded in 1879 by Queen Victoria herself to defend the British Empire against the threats posed to it by alien forces.”

Ianto followed the venerable Scotsman inside and stopped just over the threshold where a sense of welcome came over him, the feeling that he was finally home, that he was about to discover something truly wonderful and amazing.

Archie returned to the foyer with a look of annoyance on his face. “Keep up, laddie! There’s time enough for gawking when the tour’s over,” and without waiting to see if Ianto was going to follow him this time, he turned and disappeared again, Ianto hot on his heels.

“This is your flat, fully furnished, a lounge, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.” Archie waved his hand expansively at the small self-contained living quarters. “There’s four stories here, a total of thirty-eight rooms, plus four cellars, a barn and three large outbuildings. That’s where all the big stuff is kept. Here in the house are records and small artefacts dating back to the very beginning.”

“Seriously?!” Ianto was excited, this was more than could have hoped for.

“Aye, laddie,” Archie nodded solemnly. “Plus, when Canary Wharf was remodelled and the Tower was being built, the majority of London’s records and crap were brought here and never taken back.” He noticed Ianto had suddenly gone a bit pale. “Are you all right?”

“I lost a lot of friends during the Battle,” Ianto shrugged. “My girlfriend too, she died there.”

“I am sorry, laddie,” Archie shook his head sadly. “Don’t know what the hell ever possessed Yvonne to be such an arsehat, but…” he clapped Ianto on the shoulder. “Water under the bridge. Time to move on,” and he did just that, leading the way across the hall from Ianto’s new home to a large room.

“This used to be the ballroom but it’s your main office now, it has a dedicated mainframe computer protected by…” He looked around shiftily, as if he thought someone might be listening. “Well, let’s just say it was a gift from a friend, shall we?”

Ianto hid a grin; he knew for a fact that Toshiko had been the friend who’d installed a bit of alien tech on Torchwood Two’s mainframe in order to keep UNIT from hacking into it. He looked around the room with interest. One wall was all windows, allowing abundant natural light to fill the space. An old oak desk sat in the middle of the room, with the computer on one side and IN and OUT boxes on the other. It was surrounded by several large tables each covered with white sheets that hid a myriad of artefacts, if the wide array of lumps and bumps was anything to go by.

“Over on that wall…” Archie pointed, “there’s a big dumbwaiter that goes to all three upper floors and down into the kitchens below here. You can transfer whatever you want that way and there’s a couple of sets of anti-grav trollies floating around as well…” He grinned at his own humour and then pointed again, “and that is a lift that goes to all the floors… got put in back in the sixties when they tried to modernise the place. No trouble moving anything big or small.”

He led the way back to the foyer. “That’s the penny tour, laddie. There’s basic foodstuffs in your kitchen, the local market will deliver if you give Bertie a couple days’ notice or you can go into the village shops yourself or on to Glasgow if you prefer. There’s WiFi and satellite telly so you’ll not be bored, and if you want fresh air there’s hiking and the fishing in the loch is top-notch.”

“Thank you again, Archie, for bringing me up here.” Ianto shook the older man’s hand. “I know I’m going to be extraordinarily happy working here.”

“Aye, I know ye will, laddie.” Archie clapped him on the shoulder again. “And I’ll remember our agreement; if that git from Cardiff calls here, I never heard of ye!” He cackled merrily. “Serves him right to lose you. Never could stomach him. Too many teeth when he smiled.”

Ianto grinned back at him. 

“You need a hand bringing in your gear?” 

“No, there’s not much. I’ve got it.”

“All right then, I’ll be off. Pub quiz night you know.” He peered closely at Ianto. “You ought to come down some time, smart fella like you would be a right welcome addition to any team.”

“I’ll think about it, Archie, thank you.” Ianto followed him out, waving as he drove away and then retrieved his belongings from his SUV. He’d traded in his beloved Audi for a more all-terrain vehicle, knowing that part of his new job would be artefact retrieval, going out occasionally into the Highlands where his car would never have stood a chance.

It took four trips to get in his luggage, the boxes of books, CDs and DVDs and most important of all, his precious coffee machine. Several hours later he was completely unpacked, he’d enjoyed a large sandwich courtesy of the ample supplies Archie’d left in his kitchen and was sound asleep in bed by eight o’clock, probably the earliest he’d done that since he’d joined Torchwood Three.

***** 

Day One

Ianto woke early, feeling refreshed and relaxed. After a quick shower – no shave – he dressed in an old T-shirt, jeans softened by hundreds of trips through the washer, and trainers. Long gone were the three-piece suits, dress shirts and matching ties he’d lived and worked in in Cardiff, all donated to a local charity that specialised in helping less fortunate men dress better for job interviews. Then he made himself a pot of coffee, poured it into a Thermos, grabbed a clean mug and a banana and headed for his new office. He paused at the foot of the stairs, looking up through the four floors at each landing and smiled from ear to ear.

“I’m going to enjoy it here at Torchwood Two,” he told the house and he raised his Thermos in salute. “Here’s to the rest of my life.”

end


End file.
